What was your DM initiation/first campaign like?

[Pika...]

So, having had a very nice group who helped me my first time I got lucky.

Having partly helped almost make a new DM almost cry in his (2rd?) session (sorry Silus ) after literally beating his Midboss' minions with the Midboss himself I am wondering what it was like for the other DMs on here.

Go ahead, tell us your initiation stories.

[dsmiles]

Ok, my DM initiation wasn't as a DM. It was as a Storyteller in oWoD. I ran this epic story arc about Homid Galliard Glass Walker, a Metis Ahroun Black Spiral Dancer, a Camrilla Ventrue, a Ventrue Antitribu, a Seelie Cat Pookah, and an Askashic Brother mage. It was a long and involved story involving amnesia, an Unseelie Redcap, and the Technocracy.

I lasted almost 8 months, with the same characters, the same players, and they never managed to finish the story...that still gives me a sad. We were having so much fun, too...

[Zaydos]

I was around 8 (maybe 7, no older than 9). I had the 2e Monster Manual and a working understanding of the the Red Box. My players wouldn't play unless they were psionic dragons. Somewhere along the way they ended up with deific blood. Note we didn't have rules for any of the things they demanded to play.

Let's say it ended badly; they had a monk (again no rules for that in 2e) escort. They fought a beholder (I realized it was crazy powerful so the monk suddenly learned how to throw his quarterstaff), fought some aquatic umber hulks, and gith. I actually enjoyed it and they spent most of the time smiling and laughing but they wouldn't let me DM again (I was their friend's annoying little brother after all).

3.X there was a munchkin that lied about skill bonuses (and might have cheated on his stats) and claimed 3.0 psionics was brokenly overpowered, there was a ruby that held a dark god, and we decided we wanted high level after that. Don't remember much about it.

[starwoof]

The first time I DMed we were all between the ages of 8 and 10, playing 3.0. We were also cycling the dungeon master job, seeing nothing wrong with that at the time. So we were all the DM and we all had characters. I was the 'main' DM though.

I was a half-dragon fighter. Everyone's character was a god of something in the demiplane I made up (having read through Manual of the Planes recently). We killed all the gods in the player's handbook. None of us saw a problem with my good character killing Kord and Heironius and such and taking their power, and I saw nothing wrong with them killing Vecna and Nerull and such to do the same.

We also all had alternate characters of a lower level that worshiped our other characters as gods. The game was less about fighting monsters and more about us fighting each other. It was a blast and we played those characters for... more than a year.

[houlio]

I remember the best part of my first session as DM involved the party being ambushed in a tavern as they walked in, I forget why exactly. We also didn't know how attacks of opportunity worked, so the paladin murdered everyone as soon as they came near him. Then the wizard, who showed up around 20 minutes earlier and had no idea what he was doing got into a fight with a bunch of guards and lost several limbs. I think I only ran like 3 sessions in this way until I had to stop for some reason, but those are still everyone's favorite.

[Shade Kerrin]

My first game...First session was a character creation session, but the players were able to wrap that up quickly, so I needed to make up something on the spot. By the time the session ended, two of the players had already quit(Although the told me later that this was really because they weren't happy with the fact that half the party had a tendency to chatter about OOC things)
Second session, only 3 players turned up, and I killed one of them because I wouldn't reduce the challenges I had prepared.
Somehow I still had an interested player-base for the third session, which consisted of the start of a standard dungeon crawl. Only 2 turned up for the 4th, so I wound up randomly relocating everyone and running through things randomly....Somehow, this mess of a game has lasted for a year, and has a sturdy player count of 8.

[Vknight]

I didn't Dm till 4e.

The campaign started with them saving a temple from a zombie swarm over the course of a night.
That campaign ended with the players trapped in the Tower of a group of Tiamat cultists that were not even apart of the main story line.
The Main Story Line

Spoiler

Show

A guy was killing God's and Primordials absorbing there power unto his own. They had 3ways to stop him.
1) Go back in time to cause a Time Loop for him
2) Reverse his abosrbing weakining him
3) Get all the gods to put there power into 1crystal to weaken him to the point the party could fight him

My second campaign ended on a similar note, with the party destroying the core to a floating city causing it to fall 1000+ feet. They complained that the crystal exploded saying that it did not make sense.

So I'd say both bizzare and a good learning experience. I know the people I play with have to be led around by a rope or they stop and go off to the right then start zig zaging. Also let me learn that 1 of my players is a railroader and picks favorites during campaigns.

[zephyrkinetic]

*sigh*

I spent eight hours poring over templates, checking and rechecking my math, building the biggest, baddest BBEG ever. Or at least, I thought as much.
Vampiric Dracolich. Army of Undead Orcs and Goblins. I had a character sheet for every category - officers, infantrymen, archers, etc. Numbers, stats, maps, grids.

So anyway, one of my characters was playing a half-earth elemental. With stone walk.

He took a sharpened tree trunk, walked through the mountain in which the Dracolich kept his lair, and stabbed up. Staked him. Right in his stupid heart.

I probably just didn't know the right loophole, but I sure tried. I rolled to see which organ he hit. I made sure he cast all the spells he could in the time it took him to bleed out.

It was six rounds, by the way.

And I had it so the orcs and goblins would all disintegrate Blade style if BBEG bit it.

I don't remember if I kicked them all out first or if I wept in front of them.

[Arceius]

Ah... my first time GMing. Several stories from that train wreck have already shown up here on Giantitp but really the worst part was when I let my players make their own base classes... I ended up with a partially balanced Void Knight casting thingy that could dish out a hundred or so damage with half of one of his spells and a Soul based class that could one shot all of the gods... simultaneously... and keep going. Yeah, , it fell apart pretty quickly.

[Private-Prinny]

I'm close to finishing mine. It took me more than a few sessions to get my footing, but I realized one thing about my players. They are all either psychotic Evil players, or perfectly willing to go along for the ride. The key was to embrace this. At one point, they had to get information from a jaded bartender in a seedy tavern. One player claimed his goal to be to start as many barfights as possible. While everyone else talked to the barkeep, I occasionally stated one or two horrible mutilations going on in the background at the hands of the other player.

I made things as personal as possible. Everyone got a nemesis, and they had to split up to form a coordinated strike. They are in the same castle as the BBEG, an enchanter who wants to control a kingdom. They came across him due to him screwing with them being an integral part of his last attempt. One of my players was recently reincarnated as a riding dog.

It's been fun.

[The Dark Fiddler]

It was everybody's first time playing a tabletop game, let alone D&D 3.5. Because the books were mine, the DMing job fell on me. Everybody's in a town and an orc invasion happens. First battle? Crit, Steven's character is already in the negatives. Random healer shows up and heals them, we pretend it didn't happen. Next battle? Crit, dead. I give up DMing to my other friends and never look back.

[Barbin]

Demonic flying hellspawned goats from the 666th layer of The Abyss... That is all.

[Sinpoder]

I got a better one then goats! Flying firebreathing Bunnies with a vorpal bite!

[Engine]

Go ahead, tell us your initiation stories.

The group were all friends of mine, so no pressure and no nerdrage involved.
It was a campaign for Cyberpunk 2020, a lot of houserules (like no classes) and a really serious tone. Mainly an investigative campaign, it involved slavery and trafficking of human (mostly women, for purposes I will not tell but I hope you'll figure out on your own) in the Sprawl of the US East Coast (did a lot of research for that, I'm from Italy) where most of the people just ignored that young women disappeared. The Sprawl was too crowded, and people were too cynical to do something about that. The characters (and players) descended in the Sprawl, they saw first hand the worst vices of humanity and capable of doing little about that. In the end (with a climatic and cinematic battle on a roof with one of the lieutenant of a boostergang and his bodyguards) they could just save some girls, knowing all too well that the Sprawl hid a lot of similar stories with no happy ending. Theirs was not a happy ending, too. Yes, they saved some girls. But the girls bore the scars of what happened, and couldn't forget. And the characters got a lot of enemies, especially the boostergang involved in the slave trade. In the Sprawl doing the good thing is rarely a good thing, at least for you.

While a fiction, the campaign was inspired to some real stories and real testimonies. It left the players with a sense of sorrow, even they appreciated the verisimilitude of the storytelling. It was difficult for me DMing such a story, not for the playing mechanics but for always trying to convey what I felt reading those stories. Not a simple task, because I always feared I could trivialize the pain some real human being experienced. I hope I didn't.

[Akal Saris]

I was 11 or 12, and I ran 1-person games for a few of my best friends, where I also had my own PC character. The first "real" campaign I ran was The Hobbit, substituting Bilbo with my friend's PC, an elven fighter/wizard. My friend had never read the book, so he was pretty awed by the campaign. Later on I remember borrowing liberally from Hercules and Xena episodes.

[Magic Myrmidon]

My first time DMing was... part good and part bad.

It opened with a dream of their characters fighting the BBEG, but they didn't quite get that. They were all slaughtered (as per the plan) but since it was a dream, they woke up. I think this instilled a fear of the bad guy, but I'm not sure how they felt about being killed like that.

Afterwards, I had them do some gladiator fighting. Unfortunately, I had no real clue how the CR system worked, so they blasted through all of that like nothing.

It didn't help that I also didn't understand monster HD and LA, because someone was playing a bugbear barbarian at level 1. >_>

Finally, I was going to send them into some area to fight a bunch of dire animals. At that point, we went out to get lunch, because the players suggested that I take some time to think of something more interesting.


Great learning experience, let me tell ya. I think the players had a decent time, but it was a bit of a trainwreck.

[Kaulesh]

Great learning experience, let me tell ya. I think the players had a decent time, but it was a bit of a trainwreck.

As was mine. Tip: don't run GURPS as your first foray into GMing.

[Tyndmyr]

I think my first one(in D&D 3.5 at any rate) was essentially a ripped off plotline from one of Asimov's Foundation books. The one with the midget. It started off well enough, but fizzled due to, ahem, personality conflicts.

Sorcerer, warlock, rogue, samurai, and cleric, IIRC. None played according to type. The sorcerer was basically a hyper-violent rogue, the warlock was the normal-looking party leader, the rogue was half-minotaur and the party tank, the samurai took pleasure in theft and lies, and the cleric was a winged dive-bombing psychopath who never actually cast a spell.

Despite not being all that great of a plotline, it was progressing well enough until it ended, despite the party being ever so slightly chaotic.

[Raynn]

The first game I ran was a clone wars Era Star wars game that due to inexperience and railroading didn't go particularly well to be honest.

The first campaign I ran to completion was a Mutants and Masterminds game that was somewhere between One Tree Hill and heroes for about the first three quarters of the campaign. Later things got much more comic like but kept the teen tv drama elements. I have to say for a group of all guys who for the most part would never watch a teen drama it went really well. The character interaction was great and they played for hours before even getting their powers in the first game and they loved it. All in all a campaign I'm happy I ran.

I have to say though I ran a lot of bad one off games before that.

[Delwugor]

As was mine. Tip: don't run GURPS as your first foray into GMing.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

My first time GMing was a quick 3 hour one-shot which the 2 players were happy when I finished ... happy they where done that is. Lucky the term "Epic Failure" was not around at that time. Yeah it stunk that bad.

[Scarlet-Devil]

My first was... nothing to be proud of. It took place in Greyhawk, and involved marauding hordes of orcs and goblinoids driven by a mysterious force (an agent of the Far Realm). The NPCs were exceptionally awkward, and I made no attempt to change my voice or give them any kind of accents. A couple of the more experienced players, namely our usual DM, helped me a whole lot with their good roleplaying, which somewhat mitigated the general social awkwardness.

At a certain point, I realized that interesting social encounters with NPCs weren't my bag, baby, so I pretty much turned it into a hack & slash, trying to pump the party up several levels quickly so I could just skip ahead to the main boss fight and the dramatic conclusion (they killed the tentacled half-farspawn monstrosity and sealed the extraplanar gate it was trying to open which... well, I never really thought too much about what the BBEG's actual goal was, honestly, but luckily my players weren't really asking questions at that point ).